14 DAY TRIAL // Sharp was the first manufacturer to include a screen with a VGA resolution in a mobile phone, the Sharp 904SH clamshell on Vodafone.
In fact, most of their mobile phones have pretty impressive screens. As innovation is all that mobile phone manufacturers are interested in these days, Sharp has found yet again something to do that can make all users very interested in their products.
They are planning to turn the VGA resolution screen into a touchscreen that also works as a fingerprint reader. The new VGA touchscreen was developed in Sharp's European labs, features a 640 x 480 300 ppi resolution, 30fps frame rate and has a built-in image sensor that can read the user's fingerprints.
The new screen will be used in mobile phones and will add touchscreen and biometric sensor functions to them. It will also provide Sharp the possibility to implement a touchscreen scrolling function.
Now, as soon as touchscreen or scrolling function is mentioned, most people tend to think about the iPhone and how in some way the new technologies or phones are bound to infringe on some patent. It looks like in this case, the technology Sharp plans to use is not covered by the multiple Apple patents.
Also, this is pretty much better than what the iPhone offers, because aside from the user being able to use the touchscreen, scroll or flip images, there's also the fingerprint reader that could prove to be very useful.
There is currently no information on when we'll start seeing phones equipped with the touchscreen, but let's hope Sharp will start releasing them soon.